Butterfly’s expansion sounds exciting, what’s happened in the last year for you?
Butterfly has been an exceptional growth story, but 2016 was a truly exciting year for us. We not only grew in size and scope, with a team of 40+ now based in our London offices, but also in the work we do and challenges we solve for our clients.
As we continued to spread our wings further last year, we felt great traction from the US with incredible and diverse briefs coming from some of the best-known brands. We saw this opportunity and opened an office in NYC!
You talk a lot about emotional connection at Butterfly, how does this shape the work you do?
Emotions are the way that we help transform brands, businesses and the people behind them. Neuroscience has come on leaps and bounds in the last 10 years and a lot of this focus has been around how we make decisions emotionally and not rationally. Our tools aim to help uncover consumers’ emotional reactions and identify emotional insights that we can anchor a product idea, brand proposition or communication campaign on.
Butterflies taking a birdseye view of NYC
Butterfly’s work takes you around the world, what exciting projects have you been working on recently?
As one of the most international independent brand and innovation companies there is, we get to travel far and wide on some of the most fascinating brand challenges. Our projects take us around the world from Shanghai to Sao Paulo and Moscow to Nairobi and of course the US, working in almost 50 countries in the last few years.
Recent challenges include defining the future of the breakfast category; inventing a global nonalcoholic drink; creating a financial brand in Sub-Saharan Africa; and exploring trends that affect the luxury and fashion sectors.
As you continue to grow in 2017 what talent are you looking for?
We are looking for an inspirational who has 12+ years of experience working in a brand, innovation or research agency. Someone who is grounded with integrity (and great sense of fun!), who wants the opportunity to shape the future of an ambitious agency.
What are the perks & quirks of working for Butterfly?
The biggest perk for me is our team. Every day, I am surrounded with the most driven, ambitious, fun, supportive and super smart people that inspire and challenge what we do. Between us there is immense creativity and you will always find a unique point of view from whoever you are sitting next to.
I love that we are all adventurous at heart and we get to see and explore the world together. We have been to museums in Mexico, taken shots in Warsaw, worked by the pool in Florida, shared a meal with a Saudi family in Jeddha, been ice fishing in Russia and swam in the Irish sea with our clients!
My favorite quirk is that you get to immerse yourself into multiple categories and industries: one week you are an expert in cat food and the next you are running a workshop on the future of finance! This trains and develops us to have a diverse set of skills and technical capabilities that you don’t get in many other agencies.
Learning fishing (or bathing) the Russian way!
Can you give us an insight into your culture and a day in the life of a Butterfly?
At Butterfly, a big part of our culture is that we work together collaboratively; we divide and conquer instead of delegating. Collaboration also represents our diversity. We are from everywhere - different countries, different professional backgrounds and different walks of life. We use this experience and skill to create work like no one else could and ideas that challenge the norm. We enable each other to be brave, bold and adventurous. We are always pushing ourselves and supporting each other to be better than we were yesterday to deliver imaginative and inspiring work that we can be proud of.
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